ELEGIAC FEELINGS AMERICAN for the dear memory of John Kerouac 1 How inseparable you and the America

you saw yet was never there to see; you and America, like the tree and the ground, are one the same; yet how like a palm tree in the state of Oregon. . . dead ere it blossomed, like a snow polar loping the Miami How so that which you were or hoped to be, and the America not, the America you saw yet could not see So like yet unlike the ground from which you stemmed; you stood upon America like a rootless Hat-bottomed tree; to the squirrel there was no divorcement in its hop of ground to its climb of tree. . . until it saw no acorn fall, then it knew there was no marriage between the two; how fruitless, how useless, the sad unnaturalness of nature; no wonder the dawn ceased being a joy. . . for what good the earth and sun when the tree in between is good for nothing. . . the inseparable trinity, once dissevered, becomes a cold fruitless meaningless thrice-marked deathlie in its awful amputation. . . O butcher the pork-chop is not the pigThe American alien in America is a bitter truncation; and even this elegy, dear Jack, shall have a butchered tree, a tree beaten to a pulp, upon which it'll be containedno wonder no good news can be written on such bad news How alien the natural home, aye, aye, how dies the tree when the ground is foreign, cold, unfreeThe winds know not to blow the seed of the Redwood where none before stood; no palm is blown to Oregon, how wise the windWise too the senders of the prophet. . . knowing the fertility of the designated spot where suchmeant prophecy be announced and answerablethe sower of wheat does not sow in the fields of cane; for the sender of the voice did also send the ear. And were little Liechtenstein, and not America, the

designation. . . surely then we'd the tongues of Liechtenstein Was not so much our finding America as it was America finding its voice in us; many spoke to America as though America by land-right was theirs by law-right legislatively acquired by materialistic coups of wealth and inheritance; like the citizen of society believes himself the owner of society, and what he makes of himself he makes of America and thus when he speaks of America he speaks of himself, and quite often such a he is duly elected to represent what he represents. . . an infernal ego of an America Thus many a patriot speaks lovingly of himself when he speaks of America, and not to appreciate him is not to appreciate America, and vice-versa The tongue of truth is the true tongue of America, and it could not be found in the Daily Heralds since the voice therein was a controlled voice, wickedly opinionated, and directed at gullible No wonder we found ourselves rootless. . . for we've become the very roots themselves,the lie can never take root and there grow under a truth of sun and therefrom bear the fruit of truth Alas, Jack, seems I cannot requiem thee without requieming America, and that's one requiem I shall not presume, for as long as I live there'll be no requiems for me For though the tree dies the tree is born anew, only until the tree dies forever and never a tree born anew. . . shall the ground die too Yours the eyes that saw, the heart that felt, the voice that sang and cried; and as long as America shall live, though ye old Kerouac body hath died, yet shall you live. . . for indeed ours was a time of prophecy without death as a consequence. . . for indeed after us came the time of assassins, and whotll doubt thy last words "After me. . . the deluge" Ah, but were it a matter of seasons I'd not doubt the return of the tree, for what good the ground upon which we stand itself unable to standaye the tree will in seasonal time fall, for it be nature's wont, thaPs why the ground, the down, the slow yet sure decomposition, until the very tree becomes the very ground where

once it stood; yet falls the ground. . . ah, then what? unanswerable this be unto nature, for there is no ground whereon to fall and land, no down, no up even, directionless, and into what, if what, composition goeth its decomposition? We came to announce the human spirit in the name of beauty and truth; and now this spirit cries out in nature's sake the horrendous imbalance of all things natural. . . elusive nature caught! like a bird in hand, harnessed and engineered in the unevolutional ways of experiment and technique Yes though the tree has taken root in the ground the ground is upturned and in this forced vomitage is spewn the dire miasma of fossilific trees of death the million-yeared pitch and grease of a dinosauric age dead and gone how all brought to surface again and made to roam the sky we breathe in stampedes of pollution What hope for the America so embodied in thee, O friend, when the very same alcohol that disembodied your brother redman of his America, disembodied yeA plot to grab their land, we knowyet what plot to grab the ungrabbable land of one's spirit? Thy visionary America were impossible to unvisionfor when the shades of the windows of the spirit are brought down, that which was seen yet remains. . . the eyes of the spirit yet see Aye the America so embodied in thee, so definitely rooted therefrom, is the living embodiment of all humanity, young and free And though the great redemptive tree blooms, not yet full, not yet entirely sure, there be the darksters, sad and old, would like to have it fall; they hack and chop and saw away. . . that nothing full and young and free for sure be left to stand at all Verily were such trees as youth be. . . were such be made to fall, and never rise to fall again, then shall the ground fall, and the deluge come and wash it asunder, wholly all and forever, like a wind out of nowhere into nowhere

2 "How so like Clark Gable hands your hands. . ." (Mexico conversation 1956)Hands so strong and Mexican

sunned, busy about America, hands I knew would make it, would hold guard and caring You were always talking about America, and America was always history to me, General Wolfe lying on the ground dying in his bright redcoat smittered by a bluecoat hanging in the classroom wall next to the father of our country whose heart area was painted in cloud. . . yes, ours was an American history, a history with a future, for sure; How a Whitman we were always wanting, a hoping, an America, that America ever an America to be, never an America to sing about or to, but ever an America to sing hopefully for All we had was past America, and ourselves, the now America, and O how we regarded that past! And O the big lie of that school classroom! The Revolutionary War. . . all we got was Washington, Revere, Henry, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Franklin. . . never Nat Bacon, Sam Adams, Paine. . . and what of liberty? was not to gain liberty that war, liberty they had, they were the freest peoples of their time; was not to lose that liberty was why they went to armsyet, and yet, the season that blossomed us upon the scene was hardly free; be there liberty today? not to hear the redman, the blackman, the youngman tell And in the beginning when liberty was all one could hear; wasn't much of it for the poor witches of Salem; and that great lauder of liberty, Franklin, paid 100 dollar bounty for each scalp of the wild children of natural free; Pitt Jr. obtained most of the city of brotherly love by so outrageous a deception as stymied the trusting heart of his red brother with tortuous mistrust; and how ignorant of liberty the wise Jefferson owning the black losers of liberty; for the declarers of independence to declare it only for part of the whole was to declare civil war Justice is all any man of liberty need hope for; and justice was a most important foundling thing; a diadem for American life upon which the twinship of private property and God could be established; How suffered the poor native American the enforced establishing of those two pillars of liberty!

From justice stems a variable God, from God stems a dictated justice "The ways of the Lord lead to liberty" sayeth St. Paul. . . - yet a man need liberty, not God, to be able to follow the ways of God The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged; He who sells mankind's land to a single man sells the Brooklyn Bridge The second greatest cause of human death. . . is the acquiring of property No American life is worth an acre of America. . . if No Trespassing and guarding mastiffs can't tell you shotguns will So, sweet seeker, just what America sought you anyway? Know that today there are millions of Americans seeking America. . . know that even with all those eye-expanding chemicalsonly more of what is not there do they see Some find America in songs of clumping stone, some in fogs of revolution All find it in their hearts. . . and O how it tightens the heart Not so much their being imprisoned in an old and unbearable America. . . more the America imprisoned in themso wracks and darkens the spirit An America unseen, dreamed, tremors uncertain, bums the heart, sends bad vibes forth cosmic and otherwise You could see the contempt in their young-sad eyes. . . and meantime the jails are becoming barber shops, and the army has always been Yet unable they are to shave the hurricane from their eyes Look unto Moses, no prophet ever reached the dreamed of lands. . . ah but your eyes are dead. . . nor the America beyond your last dreamed hill hovers real 3 How alike our hearts and time and dying, how our America out there and in our hearts insatiable yet overHowing hallelujahs of poesy and hope How we knew to feel each dawn, to ooh and aah each golden

sorrow and helplessness coast to coast in our search for whatever joy steadfast never there nowever grey Yea the America the America unstained and never revolutioned for liberty ever in us free, the America in usunboundaried and unhistoried, we the America, we the fathers of that America, the America you Johnnyappleseeded, the America I heralded, an America not there, an America soon to be The prophet affects the state, and the state affects the prophetWhat happened to you, O friend, happened to America, and we know what happened to Americathe stain. . . the stains, O and yet when it's asked of you "What happened to him?" I say "What happened to America has happened himthe two were inseparable" Like the wind to the sky is the voice to the word.... And now that voice is gone, and now the word is bone, and the America is going, the planet boned A man can have everything he desires in his home yet have nothing outside the doorfor a feeling man, a poet man, such an outside serves only to make home a place in which to hang oneself And us ones, sweet friend, we've always brought America home with usand never like dirty laundry, even with all the stains And through the front door, lovingly cushioned in our hearts; where we sat down and told it our dreams of beauty hopeful that it would leave our homes beautiful And what has happened to our dream of beauteous America, Jack? Did it look beautiful to you, did it sound so too, in its cold electric blue, that America that spewed and stenched your home, your good brain, that unreal fake America, that caricature of America, that plugged in a wall America. . . a gallon of desperate whiskey a day it took ye to look that America in its disembodied eye And it saw you not, it never saw you, for what you saw was not there, what you saw was Laugh-in, and all America was in laughing, that America brought you in,

brought America in, all that out there brought in, all that nowhere nothing in, no wonder you were lonesome, died empty and sad and lonely, you the real face and voice. . . caught before the fake face and voiceand it became real and you fake, O the awful fragility of things "What happened to him?" "What happened to you?" Death happened him; a gypped life happened; a God gone sick happened; a dream nightmared; a youth armied; an army massacred; the father wants to eat the son, the son feeds his stone, but the father no get stoned And you, Jack, poor Jack, watched your father die, your America die, your God die, your body die, die die die; and today fathers are watching their sons die, and their sons are watching babies die, why? Why? How we both asked WHY? O the sad sad awfulness of it all You but a mere decade of a Kerouac, but what a lifetime in that dix Kerouacl Nothing happened you that did not happen; nothing went unfulfilled, you circ'd the circle full, and what's happening to America is no longer happening to you, for what happens to the consciousness of the land happens to the voice of that consciousness and the voice has died yet the land remains to forget what it has heard and the word leaves no bone And both word and land of flesh and earth suffer the same sick the same death. . . and dies the voice before the flesh, and the wind blows a dead silence over the dying earth, and the earth will leave its bone, and nothing of wind will roll the moan, but silence, silence, nor e'en that will God's ear hear Aye, what happened to you, dear friend, compassionate friend, is what is happening to everyone and thing of planet the clamorous sadly desperate planet now one voice less. . . expendable as the wind. . . gone, and who'll now blow away the awful miasma of sick, sick and dying earthflesh-soul America

When you went on the road looking for America you found only what you put there and a man seeking gold finds the only America there is to find; and his investment and a poet's investment. . . the same when comes the crash, and it's crashing, yet the windows are tight, are not for jumping; from hell none e'er fell 4 In Hell angels sing too And they sang to behold anew Those who followed the first Christ-bearer left hell and beheld a world new yet with guns and Bibles came they and soon their new settlement became old and once again hell held quay The ArcAngel Raphael was I to you And I put the Cross of the Lord of Angels upon you. . . there on the eve of a new world to explore And you were flashed upon the old and darkling day a Beat Christ-boy. . . bearing the gentle roundness of things insisting the soul was round not square And soon. . . behind thee there came a-following the children of flowers Gregory Corso North Beach, San Francisco, 1969